Cleaning devices such as wipes, sponges, brushes, brooms, mops, dusters, vacuum cleaners and the like are generally well known and widely used to clean floors and surfaces in all sorts of home, commercial and industrial environments. Such devices can be used to clean in both indoor and outdoor settings, with further traditionally outdoor devices such as rakes, mowers, blowers and the like having various applications across numerous other settings as well. Many of these devices and tools require a significant amount of manual labor to be useful, such that a wide variety powered implementations, features and other improvements have been provided for many such cleaning devices over the years to help users in this regard.
Some provided features that have been useful for various cleaning devices have involved the use of static electricity. Static or electrostatic dusters, for example, are well known devices that utilize small electrical charges to help remove dust and other small particles in household and other indoor cleaning applications. Such small electrical charges are typically generated by way of thousands of fine fibers or hairs that brush up against or otherwise move along a surface of another object, such as the object being cleaned. While such applications can be favorable with respect to dust and other small particles, the small electrostatic forces generated by such electrostatic dusters are often insufficient to clean or otherwise remove larger particles items. Of course, the use of significantly larger electrical forces would then tend to present safety issues that would need to be addressed.
Unfortunately, the traditional use of small electrostatic forces in dusting or cleaning applications can also have additional drawbacks, such as a lack of control over the electrostatic forces, an inability to distinguish between different particles or objects being cleaned, and a tendency for the electrically charged components to be difficult or more time consuming to clean or otherwise maintain. This last drawback can often result in the need to replace components or devices more often, which can add significantly to the overall cost of use for such devices.
Although many cleaning devices and methods have generally worked well in the past, there is always a desire for improvement. In particular, what is desired are cleaning devices and methods that are able to utilize greater electrical forces that can clean a greater variety of items in a controlled, safe and more discriminating manner.